Is It Climate Change or Global Warming? Both. And the Republicans Are Still in Denial.

 

I came across an interesting statistic in the New York Times this week. In the year 2000, the federal government issued two disaster declarations for floods. So far in 2024, it has issued 66. The accompanying chart illustrates just how fast climate is changing. For the years between 2001 and 2009, the disaster declarations were 5, 4, 0, 1, 2, 2, 1, 3, and 3. Then the numbers start climbing erratically but rapidly. It’s a bar chart, so I’m just eyeballing these numbers, but in 2010 it appears there were 9, in 2011 26, in 2012 only 3, followed by 17, 10, 9, 18, 13, 17, 54, 21, 9, 14, 42, 66.

As the Times article says, “The reasons are no mystery. Global warming is making storms more severe because warmer air holds more water. At the same time, more Americans are moving to the coast and other flood-prone areas.”

This statistical evidence for floods, coupled with all the other extreme weather-related events, including severe droughts and rampant wildfires, should leave no doubt in anyone’s mind that the climate scientists have been right all along. The earth is warming because of our practice of burning fossil fuels, and global warming is advancing faster than the scientists have projected.

So, the obvious course of action for any sane population would be to transition as fast as reasonable to clean energy, which is what the Biden administration has attempted to do. But what about the Republicans. There are a few, like my next senator, Representative John Curtis, who are trying to move the dial among conservatives, but their efforts have been largely ineffective and mostly symbolic.

To see where the Republican Party as a whole stands on the issue of global warming and climate change, I went to the party’s official 2024 platform. Here’s what I found.

Among the twenty promises it lists as part of its “forward-looking Agenda,” are these: “4. Make America the dominant energy producer in the world, by far.” “15. Cancel the electric vehicle mandate and cut costly and burdensome regulations.” I’m assuming since cutting regulations is lumped with electric vehicles, they are referring to their traditional stance of removing fuel-efficiency restrictions on gas-guzzling vehicles.

In a paragraph prior to the 20 promises, the platform reads, “Common Sense tells us clearly that we must unleash American Energy if we want to destroy Inflation and rapidly bring down prices, build the Greatest Economy in History. . . . We will DRILL, BABY, DRILL and we will become Energy Independent, and even Dominant again. The United States has more liquid gold under our feet than any other Nation, and it’s not even close. The Republican Party will harness that potential to power our future.” The random capitalization suggests this was written by Donald Trump or someone trying to impersonate his writing style and bombast. But what is not acknowledged here is that the Biden administration has already unleashed American energy, through both drilling and spurring rapid advancement in clean energy. And (ahem) there is no inflation to destroy. The Fed and the Biden administration have already brought inflation under control, and they have done it without tanking the economy—the proverbial soft landing.

Directly following the 20 promises, the GOP platform returns to energy, claiming that “we will soon be again [the Number One Producer of Oil and Natural Gas] by lifting restrictions on American Energy Production and terminating the Socialist Green New Deal.” I’m not sure how they are going to terminate the Green New Deal, since it never became law in the U.S. In 2019, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) sponsored legislation for a Green New Deal, but it died in the Senate (surprise!). Apparently, the GOP doesn’t know this. They also apparently don’t know that the U.S. is already the top producer of both oil and natural gas in the world. The difference between GOP plans and Democratic plans, however, is that Democrats understand that we do need to wean our nation off of fossil fuels, and that they have established programs to rapidly increase clean energy, programs the GOP will surely deep-six if Trump is elected.

A little later in the GOP platform, they again promise to “streamline permitting, and end market-distorting restrictions on Oil, Natural Gas, and Coal.” This will supposedly help “pave the way for future Economic Greatness,” even though the U.S. economy is right now the envy of almost all other nations. From fourth quarter 2019 through first quarter 2024, when compared with other advanced economies, the U.S. was middle of the road on inflation but far ahead of the next-best economies in terms of GDP growth. So, the Republicans are out to fix something that isn’t broken. But they have to pretend that we’re experiencing a terrible economy. Admitting the truth would be political suicide.

At least they are honest about their plans to combat global warming and the monstrously expensive natural disasters it is already causing. They have none. In fact, their platform is noteworthy for its promises to make everything a lot worse. It appears to still be a badge of honor among Republicans to deny the reality and danger of a warming planet and a changing climate. The Democrats would do more, but their hands are tied by our divided electorate and government. I can’t help but wonder how many multibillion-dollar weather-related disasters we will have to suffer before both parties, but especially the Republicans, will be willing to take the drastic steps we need to take to preserve a habitable earth. It is, after all, the only planet we have.

There is, of course, a lot more crazy stuff in the GOP platform, but I’ll save that for another day.

What If Trump Wins?

 

Adam Gopnik’s New Yorker article from October 14, “How Alarmed Should We Be if Trump Wins Again?” describes two reactions to Trump’s campaign for the presidency. He talks about the minimalists who normalize the ex-president by minimizing the damage he might do in a second term and the maximalists who present a frightening picture of what a Trump win might mean. In the end, he comes down unequivocally on the side of the maximalists. Here’s a lengthy quote from near the end of the article:

“Think hard about the probable consequences of a second Trump Administration—about the things he has promised to do and can do, the things that the hard-core group of rancidly discontented figures (as usual with authoritarians, more committed than he is to an ideology) who surround him wants him to do and can do. Having lost the popular vote, as he surely will, he will not speak up to reconcile ‘all Americans.’ He will insist that he won the popular vote, and by a landslide. He will pardon and then celebrate the January 6th insurrectionists, and thereby guarantee the existence of a paramilitary organization that’s capable of committing violence on his behalf without fear of consequences. He will, with an obedient Attorney General, begin prosecuting his political opponents; he was largely unsuccessful in his previous attempt only because the heads of two U.S. Attorneys’ offices, who are no longer there, refused to coöperate. When he begins to pressure CNN and ABC, and they, with all the vulnerabilities of large corporations, bend to his will, telling themselves that his is now the will of the people, what will we do to fend off the slow degradation of open debate?

“Trump will certainly abandon Ukraine to Vladimir Putin and realign this country with dictatorships and against NATO and the democratic alliance of Europe. Above all, the spirit of vengeful reprisal is the totality of his beliefs—very much like the fascists of the twentieth century in being a man and a movement without any positive doctrine except revenge against his imagined enemies. And against this: What? Who? The spirit of resistance may prove too frail, and too exhausted, to rise again to the contest. Who can have confidence that a democracy could endure such a figure in absolute control and survive? An oncologist who, in the face of this much evidence, shrugged and proposed watchful waiting as the best therapy would not be an optimist. He would be guilty of gross malpractice. One of those personal-injury lawyers on the billboards would sue him, and win.

“What any plausible explanation must confront is the fact that Trump is a distinctively vile human being and a spectacularly malignant political actor. In fables and fiction, in every Disney cartoon and Batman movie, we have no trouble recognizing and understanding the villains. They are embittered, canny, ludicrous in some ways and shrewd in others, their lives governed by envy and resentment, often rooted in the acts of people who’ve slighted them. (‘They’ll never laugh at me again!’) They nonetheless have considerable charm and the ability to attract a cult following. This is Ursula, Hades, Scar—to go no further than the Disney canon. Extend it, if that seems too childlike, to the realms of Edmund in ‘King Lear’ and Richard III: smart people, all, almost lovable in their self-recognition of their deviousness, but not people we ever want to see in power, for in power their imaginations become unimaginably deadly. Villains in fables are rarely grounded in any cause larger than their own grievances—they hate Snow White for being beautiful, resent Hercules for being strong and virtuous. Bane is blowing up Gotham because he feels misused, not because he truly has a better city in mind.

“Trump is a villain. He would be a cartoon villain, if only this were a cartoon. Every time you try to give him a break—to grasp his charisma, historicize his ascent, sympathize with his admirers—the sinister truth asserts itself and can’t be squashed down. He will tell another lie so preposterous, or malign another shared decency so absolutely, or threaten violence so plausibly, or just engage in behavior so unhinged and hate-filled that you’ll recoil and rebound to your original terror at his return to power. One outrage succeeds another until we become exhausted and have to work hard even to remember the outrages of a few weeks past: the helicopter ride that never happened (but whose storytelling purpose was to demean Kamala Harris as a woman), or the cemetery visit that ended in a grotesque thumbs-up by a graveside (and whose symbolic purpose was to cynically enlist grieving parents on behalf of his contempt). No matter how deranged his behavior is, though, it does not seem to alter his good fortune.”

Basically, he’s saying that the minimalists haven’t been paying attention. Trump is not harmless, as those who worked in his previous administration know very well (see my previous post for links to statements by former staffers, family members, and Republican officials who oppose him). It saddens me to no end to know that the LDS vote will give Trump Utah’s Electoral College ballots. Yes, I’ve heard all the excuses, and they all ring hollow.

Trump? Never!

If you are entertaining even the remote possibility of voting for Donald Trump or know anyone who has been deceived by this monster’s lies, please follow the links listed below or share them with your friends and family members who might vote for Trump. I’ve collected these here for your convenience.

 

Testimony from Trump Administration Officials, Family Members, Business Associates, Republican Politicians, Conservative Voices, and World Leaders

 

Letter from 111 Republican Former National Security Leaders Supporting Vice President Harris

 

Letter from 16 Nobel Prize–Winning Economists Warning about Trump’s Economic Plan

Letter from 200 former Bush, McCain, and Romney Staff Members Endorsing Harris and Warning about Trump

 

More Than 700 National Security Leaders Sign Letter Supporting Harris

 

And in case these warnings from people who know Trump, know government, and know why he is a danger to the United States and the world are not enough to convince you, perhaps you’ve forgotten what having a narcissistic demagogue in power was really like. If so, here is a complete catalogue of Trump’s Worst Cruelties, Collusions, Corruptions, and Crimes, compiled by Ben Parker, Stephanie Steinbrecher, Kelsey Ronan, John McMurtrie, Sophia DuRose, Rachel Villa, and Amy Sumerton for McSweeney’s. The catalog begins with 39 atrocities that occurred before Trump took office, then lists 1,017 that occurred during his presidency. While Trump was in office, it seemed like a scandal a day. Well, it was, almost.